Page 61 of Her Frozen Heart

“Jesus.” Nikki couldn’t imagine what Monday had put the girl’s corpse through.

“We might have a copycat on our hands, then,” Miller said. “Monday never disposed of his victims in the state where he took them, except for this girl, which is the murder that finally got him caught.”

“Not a copycat,” Nikki said. “Or where he buried his victims would only be about subterfuge. This is more than that. It’s almost like they’re his own private collection. I bet he visits the site frequently, especially during the summer. He wants to make sure it’s not disturbed, but he also gets off on knowing what he put in the ground.”

“The ultimate form of control,” Liam muttered.

“When did the book about Monday come out?” Nikki asked.

“Two years ago,” Liam said. “Monday killed his first victim when he was twelve, because she rejected him. And the guy definitely was the type of Millennial killer, or whatever Roth called them. He’d read all of the true crime books, downloaded tons of podcasts, and spent hours studying how killers got caught and how they didn’t. He got so familiar with police tactics that that’s one of the ways he avoided capture. He talked his way out of a ticket more than once.”

Nikki drummed her fingers on the tabletop, fighting the exhaustion that was starting to wash over her. “So our killer’s a fan of Monday’s. Who killed himself before trial, so there’s no chance we could check prison logs for visitors and letters.”

“Doug Elwood wrote the foreword,” Liam said. “He called Monday the scariest and smartest he’d dealt with, and that included Bundy and all the others he’d encountered.”

Elwood had been Nikki’s teacher and mentor at Quantico. In the late seventies, when Douglas and Ressler were interviewing murderers and getting the original Behavioral Science team together, Elwood had been one of a select few rookie agents chosen to be part of the team. During his tenure on the team, he’d worked the Atlanta child murders and helped to catch Bundy and the Green River Killer, along with dozens of other horrific cases. By the time Nikki arrived at the academy, fresh out of college with a master’s degree in psychology and the naïve idea that she could handle any criminal because of her parents’ murders, Elwood had retired as a full-time agent. He taught several classes and oversaw the curriculum for new applicants in their department, and he still traveled as an author and trained law enforcement officers on basic profiling. She hadn’t done the best job of staying in touch, but she knew without a doubt that he’d never make that statement unless he meant it.

“Elwood had interviewed Richard Ramirez twice when I first started at Quantico,” Nikki said. “He had nightmares for weeks after sitting down with Ramirez.”

Liam leaned back in his chair, balancing it on its back legs. “He writes that Monday was worse than anyone else, more sadistic and calculating and a lot smarter. You think our guy’s trying to one-up this Monday somehow?”

“I don’t know,” Nikki admitted. “But I think it’s more about this killer’s ego than being inspired by some other serial killer.”

“Sounds about right,” Liam said. “I checked traffic records looking for a white pickup similar to the one seen at the lake, but no luck. I also called the Mall of America’s security office and asked for parking garage videos from Black Friday, specifically on the east end of the mall, where Kesha disappeared. I’ve got Kendra and Jim looking for the pickup.”

Nikki’s email dinged with a new message from the medical examiner’s office. Her stomach plummeted. “Blanchard identified the missing couple. Dee and John Henderson of rural Duluth, missing since September twelfth. When John and Dee both missed work, Dee’s cousin went to their lake house. Both cars in the garage, Dee’s purse, John’s wallet, car keys, phone—all left behind. The house looked normal, but the fish house down by the lake had been bleached clean. They searched the area for weeks with no results.”

Liam rubbed his temples. “Monday took a couple from Ohio and buried them in Pennsylvania. He bragged about having sex with the man while his wife was forced to watch.”

“Yet another reason for our killer to feel some kind of connection with Monday,” Miller said. “Monday loathed himself and his sexuality. Did Blanchard say anything else?”

“John Henderson was sexually assaulted so badly his perineum was torn, right up to the scrotum.” Nikki barely managed to get the words out of her dry mouth. “Spermicide found with both victims, so he used a condom. Dee was raped vaginally and anally. Cause of death for both was asphyxiation, and their stomach contents suggested they were killed within hours of each other. She doesn’t know who was killed first.”

“We need to ID the oldest victim,” Liam said. “We’ve compiled a list of every unsolved missing female in the state between the ages of twelve and thirty in the last decade, but we need more information to narrow it down.”

Nikki unlocked her phone and scrolled through her contacts until she found the forensic anthropologist’s phone number. She’d almost given up when the call finally connected.

“Doctor JoAnn Willard.”

“Hi, Doctor Willard, it’s Agent Nikki Hunt. You’re on speaker with the sheriff and Agent Wilson. I know it’s a tough process, but have you made any progress on the remains?”

“As a matter of fact, I was just putting together my notes to call you,” Willard said. “I presume Doctor Blanchard contacted you about the couple buried together?”

“Yes,” Nikki said. “We’re hoping you’ve made some headway with the oldest set of remains.”

“Victim A is still a bit of a mystery,” Willard said. “My initial assessment was correct. The remains belong to a female. Her bone plates are fused, but there’s no indication she’s given birth. Her wisdom teeth are present but hadn’t erupted, and they were still in the jaw. I also measured the one femur we were able to recover. Between the size and the lack of degenerative evidence in the bone, I don’t think she was older than thirty, and she may have been as young as a teenager. Her hyoid bone was gone, so I can’t tell you if she was strangled, but her ribs and wrist bones are broken in a way that suggests a physical altercation. It also looks like she suffered blunt force trauma before she died. I can’t tell you if that was her cause of death, however.”

“Can you tell how long the bones have been there?”

“Given their condition and the lack of insects, organic material, these bones are at least twenty years old, and that’s a conservative number.”

“What about the victim next to her and the Native American woman?”

“Victim B, buried next to the remains in the towel, is still unidentified. I can tell you her hyoid was crushed, and she was most likely strangled with something long and cylindrical, strong enough to really pulverize some of the bone. She was likely between eighteen and thirty when she was killed, based on the pelvic bones and wisdom teeth, but that’s preliminary. I’ve nothing yet on Victim C. Dental records did come in this morning for Victim D, the Native American female. Her name is Elyssia Kaiser, aged twenty-six. Reported missing after leaving her job at Mystic Lake Casino just over a year ago. Cause of death appears to be similar to Victim B’s. Since these remains are skeletonized, I can’t tell you if the women were sexually assaulted. So we’ve identified three out of the six.”

But not the first victim, whose identity might be our best shot at catching this guy. Nikki thanked Willard and switched gears, calling Courtney. “Hopefully Courtney has some more information on Victim A.”

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

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